Was this Starbucks closure influenced by an indie competitor?

Confession of one of my obsessive activities - for the last several years, I have been keeping notebooks that list places that I visit. Initially I was REALLY obsessive and also recorded lat-long locations, but I dropped that part of the exercise very quickly. For this reason, while I often can't remember your name, I can often remember the address of the place where I met you.

Therefore, when I was scanning this Inland Valley Daily Bulletin article about Starbucks' latest round of store closures (which follows its earlier round of store closures), this location immediately caught my eye:

8880 Foothill Blvd., Rancho Cucamonga

Now I can put that into context by noting that the location is in an Albertson's shopping center, or that "Foothill Blvd." is on the historical pathway of U.S. Route 66. But there's a more significant factoid associated with this location - 8880 Foothill Blvd. is just down the street from 8916 Foothill Blvd.

Which happens to be the location of a place called Coffee Klatch. I talked about Coffee Klatch in a post in my mrontemp blog last year - they were offering free coffee while all the Starbucks, including the one across the street, were closed for barista training.

Is it possible that the 8880 Starbucks closed because enough people chose to get their coffee at a place across the street?

Actually, in this case there's another explanation - because the aforementioned Albertson's has its own Starbucks. Unless you live in Seattle, there's little need to have two Starbucks separated by a one-minute walk.

But I wouldn't be surprised if there are some "slaying the corporate beast" parties at Coffee Klatch.

Incidentally, more information about the Rancho Cucamonga Coffee Klatch can be found at the http://klatchroasting.com/content/view/25/51/ URL.